


You Can't Shake The Devil Tree And Expect An Angel To Fall Out

by prouvairablehulk



Series: The Bastard Hamilton Sequence [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, The John Silver is a Bastard Hamilton fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 08:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12701187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: John Silver is deeper than the sea, more vengeful than a ghost, more tangled than a gordian knot, and none of them know it yet.





	You Can't Shake The Devil Tree And Expect An Angel To Fall Out

After a week aboard the Walrus, late at night, during a game of cards, Logan calls John Silver a bastard. It’s meant with affection, the teasing smile already plastered on his face before he opens his mouth, but John flinches nonetheless, draws back from the word as though he expects it to hit him. 

No one on the Walrus thinks much of it. Every man aboard had one reason or another to have turned his back on civilisation. Apparently, they had tripped over Silver’s, and as far as they were concerned, that was that - John Silver told society to fuck off with emphatic cannon fire and larceny because he was, factually, a bastard. A simple explanation for a far more complex man.

John Silver is deeper than the sea, more vengeful than a ghost, more tangled than a gordian knot, and none of them know it yet. 

***  
He’s tiny, is the boy in the door to Thomas and his brothers’ schoolroom, like an imp or a fae from the Irish fables the kitchen maid is all too happy to tell Thomas while she peels potatoes and pushes her red hair back from her freckled face. He’s got curly dark hair that falls long into his face in such a manner that blocks it from view, a style that Thomas knows his father would never allow, but his eyes - the eyes that peek through those curls, alarmed and disbelieving - those eyes are the most familiar thing Thomas knows. He sees them in the mirror every morning, after all. 

“This is John,” says the nursemaid, “and he is to be your brother from now on. Your father the Earl has agreed to take him in as his ward, to give him his name and his care.”

Thomas reaches out for the tiny boy without thinking. 

John returns the embrace remarkably eagerly, clutching at the back of Thomas’ shirt with small, chubby hands. 

He wouldn’t let go for many, many years to come. 

***  
John Silver steals and lies and cheats and does it all with a roguish wink and a smile so charming it could melt the collar off a priest, and James Flint is going to kill him with his own two hands as soon as that gold is safely stowed, those fucking blue eyes be damned. 

No, that is a lie. 

John Silver lies and steals and manipulates and does it all with a roguish wink and a smile that could melt the collar off a priest and tempt a Saint down the wrong kind of path, and James Flint is fucking screwed because John Silver has eyes that are just the same shade of blue as Thomas Hamilton’s had been, and James has always been powerless against eyes like that. 

John Silver, at least, doesn’t have unsupportable ideas about bringing law back to Nassau, and James will always be grateful for small mercies. What John Silver does have, however, is a fucking death wish. 

Between attempting to sell the schedule to Vane and then memorizing it to deliberately fuck up everything James had planned for the next six weeks and then somehow getting involved with a plot that included both Anne Bonny and Eleanor Guthrie, James is certain that Silver’s ultimate goal is tricking his way into an early grave.

An early grave that will in fact be well-funded, because he’d looked up at James and said ‘we might be friends by then’ and James had seen those eyes and heard ‘are you the liaison sent by the admiralty?’ and found himself agreeing to something he’d never wanted, but seemed to have ended up wishing for anyway.

And so here they are, James with a musket ball in his shoulder and John with a botefeux that’s still lit and a cannon that’s still smoking and both of them with a mutiny playing out in front of them, and the only thing that is still clear and unhazy in James’ sight are those eyes - John Silver’s bluer than blue eyes that are so familiar and so unknown all at once.

When he goes under the water, he sees Thomas smiling and reaching out to him, and then suddenly he’s become Silver, a transformation that seems to happen around the eyes without them ever changing. He’s dying and he knows it and all he can see is those eyes, and if you asked him he couldn’t tell you which of them the eyes belonged to, because the crinkle at the corners and the adoration are the same. The world goes dark in a gradient that starts with blue, and James can feel the weight on his chest and welcomes it for the peace it offers. 

He wakes with the taste of salt on his tongue and the sky expansive above him, just the same shade of blue as those fucking eyes. 

***

Thomas Hamilton at twenty, if you asked John Silver, is not all that different from Thomas Hamilton at ten, in that he is touch-starved, impulsive, idealistic, and reckless in the way that is going to get him killed one day, although that last has progressed from “due to his own stubbornness” to “likely at their father’s behest”. 

Thomas is sitting on the stone steps of College Dorm with his coat pulled tight around his torso when John sneaks out somewhere between the bell chimes for one and two in the morning, a shit-eating grin on his face. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Oxford?” says John, because it is the first of many things he wants to know. 

“I suppose I am, yes.” says Thomas, and he stretches his hands out to pull John towards him. John dances back, out of his reach.

“Father is going to be so angry with you.” he hisses.

“Yes.” says Thomas, looking inordinately pleased with the idea. “He will be.”

“Why the fuck do you seem happy about that?” 

If Thomas is surprised by John’s newly-enlarged vulgar vocabulary, he doesn’t show it.

“Because if he’s angry about me running out to you, then he won’t ask about why I actually ran out.” Thomas answers, as though this makes perfect sense. To a then fifteen year old John, it made about as much sense as the old greek poetry Thomas loved, written in a language John had yet to be taught.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I - well, you see -” says Thomas, and it is in fact the first time that John has ever heard Thomas lost for words. 

“No, I don’t see.” says John, who has been a little shit ever since Thomas introduced him to the concept and practise of sarcasm at eleven.

“I left in order that I have a good explanation for why I can’t have been where the Earl of Kent’s son and heir is about to claim I was.” 

“And why would you need that? Thomas, please tell me you didn’t punch the son and heir of the Earl of Kent. There are too many people here who like Henry.” 

“I - definitely did not punch him.” says Thomas and he sounds - smug?

“What did you do?” asks John, suddenly nervous about the answer. 

“I - well - I -” Thomas begins, and then he stops, and swallows. “I fucked him.” 

John sits down, right where he’d been formerly standing. 

“Oh.” he says. 

“John?” says Thomas, and now he sounds nervous. 

“I - well -” says John, trying to put the thoughts rushing through his head into a coherent sentence.

“Johnny -” says Thomas again, and now it sounds like he’s pleading, and John pushes up and over his knees so that he can wrap his hands around Thomas’ waist. 

“I didn’t know you were like me.” says John, tightening his grip. 

Thomas clutches at John’s shirt, this time, and they stay like that until the bells ring four and John’s hair is wet where Thomas has been crying into it, and rather than part, John sneaks Thomas back into his bedroom and they wrap themselves around each other under John’s veritable mountain of blankets, with their foreheads pressed together until the House Master in charge of the boys finds them in the morning. They have a leisurely breakfast before John’s morning classes, mostly because John’s House Master is Thomas’ former House Master, and he remembers Thomas as an intelligent and endearing young man. 

“A pleasure to have in class.” teases John, before dodging to the other side of the table to prevent Thomas from ruffling his hair beyond all semblance of order. 

“I’ll write to you, darling brother!” Thomas calls as he departs, at last, his voice echoing against the stone, and John hides his grin with his hair and balls his fists until his knuckles turn white so that he doesn’t call back to beg Thomas to recount every detail of his conquests in those letters. 

“So nice of him to visit you.” says John’s House Master. “He is a stalwart example of the best that Eton can produce. Now, off with you, Hamilton, noun declensions wait for no man.” 

***

James and Silver are going to steal a warship, and they are not going to die in the process. Maybe if James says this to himself enough times, he might believe it. 

James and Silver are going to steal a warship, and - and Silver is going to get them both killed for a fucking tin whistle. 

James kills a man in his hammock and pulls Silver outside by the collar of his shirt, leaving rust-colored smudges on the linen with his bloodstained hands, and Silver tells him exactly what he’s stolen and why he’s stolen it, and he’s looking at James with those damnable blue eyes while being damnable clever and it’s too close to another day, in a room lined with bookshelves and art that still smelled like oils, rain on the windowpane and James the one against the wall while Thomas pressed close and purred his filthy plans into James’ ears. James lets go of the linen and presses his lips together until they hurt and moves on with the plan. Silver blows the whistle and raises the signal flag and James kills another man, adds another layer of blood to his hands, and then he’s surrounded.

James and Silver are going to not die, and maybe steal a warship in the process. 

James and Silver are not going to die. 

Silver is a backstabbing, thieving bastard, and James is, in fact, going to die. 

Silver is a man of hidden depths and loyalty, and is simultaneously the smartest and the least intelligent man that James has ever had the misfortune of working with. 

“Well, what the fuck did you think was going to happen?” James yells, and Silver shoots. The rest of the day passes in a blur of things that James has to plan for, and then they are alive and will stay that way thanks to two votes, and Silver is looking at James while James looks out at the sea, and Silver sees through every veil James has hung between himself and the world, and he looks up at James through his lashes. 

“I think you need me to do it.” he says. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Strange pairs, Lieutenant.” James hears. “They can accomplish the most extraordinary things.”

***

At three-and-twenty, pockets lined with scammed coin, John Hamilton, known to the aristocracy as That Seductive Bastard, puts his feet up on the empty chair residing opposite his to prevent yet another young noble looking for an exciting piece of rough to lord it over for a night from taking it. 

“I’m waiting for someone.” he says, firmly. 

“I can guarantee he’s not anywhere as good as me.” says the lordling, and John rolls his eyes so hard they might roll right out of his head. 

“That’s a far cry from what you said while I was studying here.” 

The lordling spins with a look of horror on his face and John tips his head back and starts to laugh. 

“Dear Christ, Johnny, don’t do that.” says Lord Thomas Hamilton, known to the aristocracy as The Madman of Whitehall. “I’ll be beating them off with a stick all night, and that will be quite the disruption to our conversation.” 

“I don’t know.” says John, contemplative. “It would be a lovely view. And I’ve always had a soft spot for you playing the White Knight for your little brother.” 

Thomas grins and opens his arms, and John walks right into them. John never hit the growth spurt Thomas did, and so his face ends up pressed against Thomas’ chest, but it’s such a pleasant feeling that he can’t bring himself to care. 

“I have so much to tell you!” Thomas says. 

“Whose son have you despoiled this week?” asks John, returning to his seat. Thomas flings himself down in the other with the greatest possible flair. 

“His father was a carpenter in the Navy.” says Thomas. 

“You’re fucking your liaison.” John says, voice flat. 

“Yes, I’m fucking the liaison.” says Thomas. 

“It’s about fucking time!” says John, slapping his hand on the table for emphasis. “If I had to hear you compare his freckles to constellations or his hair to fire or silk threads one more time I was going to take a pleasant stroll on the bed of the fucking Thames.” 

Thomas goes a very pretty shade of pink. 

“Was I as obvious as all that?” he asks, and John laughs and pushes the drink he’d bought for Thomas towards him. 

“Yes, brother mine.” says John. “Am I to assume that this means you are renouncing all others?” 

Thomas shoots him a glare. 

“Oh.” says John, suddenly taken aback. “Oh, you are genuinely serious about this. You - you love him?” 

Thomas goes even pinker. 

“You did something gloriously dramatic, didn’t you.” says John. 

Thomas tells him about the book and the meaning of it and the inscription, and John lets his forehead fall to the sticky wood of the table. 

“My truest love - you romantic shit.” he tells Thomas, and Thomas reddens more. “You utterly absurd romantic shit.” 

“It is the truth!” says Thomas, and John beams as he shakes his head in disbelief. 

“I am so very happy for you, brother mine.” says John, and Thomas smiles. 

Thomas is incandescent when he’s happy, and John has never seen him this bright.  
“He’s - he’s something else, Johnny.” says Thomas. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.” 

Now, that’s new. Thomas has never wanted to introduce any of his flings to John - he never wanted anyone to know the truth about John’s parentage, to challenge the accepted truth that John was a Hamilton ward. It was a dangerous secret to know, Alfred Hamilton’s indiscretion. 

“You want me to meet him- you just told me sailed for the Bahamas, Thomas.”

“When he returns, little brother. I would like to have you for dinner, so that you might meet him.” 

John finds himself smiling to match Thomas. 

“Alright, then. I would like to meet your James.” 

“My James.” says Thomas, his eyes wide with wonder. “Isn’t it just marvellous?” 

***  
The liars of yore who earned the epithet of Silvertongue must all be gathering in spirit to confer their collective titles onto John Silver, who stands in the middle of a room of men who shouldn’t give a single, solitary fuck about what James wants and makes them want it more than they want air in their lungs or food in their bellies or a beat in their hearts. John Silver makes the promise of free land under your boots and a back unbowed sound like the promise of a return to Eden, and the men eat from his hand as he does it. 

James Flint knows the danger of men with power - he has been their victim and their pawn - and he is more afraid of the power in Silver’s tongue than he ever was of Alfred Hamilton and his ilk. 

John Silver weaves webs out of words and traps you in them in such a way that trying to unravel them only leaves you more tangled. James listens to Miranda and then argues with Miranda, and then declares he never should have listened to Miranda, and then listens to Miranda, and Abigail Ashe looks horrified when he enters the tavern, right up until he puts down his sword and introduces himself. Until he says his name is McGraw. They sail to Charlestown with Abigail and she spends her days writing while Miranda reads, and the journey is uneventful, save for the fraying of the mainmast footrope and the rigger they lose to the afterlife and the sea as a result. Silver seems somewhat distracted by the man’s death, but James has bigger concerns than the contentment of his liar, and so he thinks nothing of it. 

With a day to go before they arrive in Charlestown, he joins Miranda on her evening turn about the deck. 

“I think you should go alone to see Peter.” he says. “I am worried that even with Abigail’s safe return, I will be hung for what I have done as Flint, regardless of who I once was.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” says Miranda. “Peter will recognize us. We are not that far removed from who we once were.” 

“I fear that I am.” says James. 

“Peter always liked you.” says Miranda, resting a placating hand on James’ arm. 

“Peter always liked Thomas.” says James, perhaps more sharply than he needs to. 

“And we will be doing this in Thomas’ name.” says Miranda. 

“Thomas would not want me to risk your life.” says James. 

“We have something to fight for.” says Miranda.

“Believe me, I know that.” James snaps. 

“And you are a good man, fighting for a good cause.” says Miranda. 

“I am rather afraid you seem to have confused me with your husband!” yells James. “And I am not your husband!” 

Someone behind them gasps, and James realizes that their conversation has been held at a louder volume than he had first thought. 

“I know you’re not my husband,” yells Miranda, who seems not to have noticed the gasp, “because my husband is dead and you are not.” 

It hurts - that comment hurts just the same as it would had Miranda cut James open with a sword like Singleton once had. 

“And who’s fault is that?” James roars back, darkness and guilt and long repressed anger guiding his tongue. “Who said we had to leave him behind?”

“We would have died!” yells Miranda. 

“And Peter might still kill me - kill you - kill us both!” James yells. 

“Miranda?” 

Both James and Miranda fall silent, turning to look at the speaker. Not a man on this ship knows Miranda’s first name - she has only ever been Mrs Barlow - and yet there, at the railing, clutching the ropes with a white-knuckled grip, stands John Silver, looking like he’s seen a ghost. 

“Miranda?” he asks again. 

James is across the deck and in Silver’s face before he’s aware what his feet are doing.

“How the fuck do you know her name?” he demands. 

Silver reaches out, rests a hand on James’ shoulder, moving slow all the while like he’s trapped in molasses. 

“James.” he breathes. The whole ship is silent, watching them. “You are his James.” 

There’s a wonder in Silver’s face that James has never seen before. 

“His James.” says Silver again, voice faint, eyes unfocused, like he’s in some kind of trance. The hand on James’ shoulder moves to cup his face. 

Silver’s eyes are as unreadable and dark as the sea. Thomas’ used to look like that on the days when lightning arced over London. 

And just like that, James understands. 

***

John only ever used the servants’ entrance to the King Street house, entirely from force of habit. The night that he was to meet Thomas’ James was no different. The city was grey and wet from the persistent drizzle that had been coming and going all day, and John was done up in the best finery he had brought to Oxford with him, rumpled but still presentable after the long journey. Brighid the kitchen maid met him with a delighted squeal and a tight hug. 

“Master John!” she cries. “Master John, it is so good to see you!” 

“You’ve lost weight.” says Martha the cook, who used to slip John extra cookies in the afternoons. “What are they feeding you at that university?” 

The servants know. The servants have always known. They know that John is more than a ward, that his mother’s name was Da Silva and his father wasn’t a dead sailor but alive and, on occasion, under the same roof as them. The servants know John is one of theirs. 

“They feed me well, Martha.” says John, smiling, “but not as well as you. Thomas says you have something special for us tonight?”

“Of course!” says Martha. “The Lieutenant’s home today, isn’t he?” 

“You like him, then - Thomas’ James?” 

Brighid giggles. 

“He’s very handsome.” she tells John, and then she leans in conspiratorially. “And he’s very - obedient.”

John sniggers too, at that, and then yelps when Martha whacks the back of his hand with the wooden spoon she’d been carrying. 

“No gossiping in this kitchen.” she says, voice stern. 

“Come on, Martha, you must have an opinion on tha man.” John cajoles. 

“Well,” says Martha, leaning in, eyes dancing, “I overheard -” 

The doors at the back of the kitchen bang open with some force, and two men John vaguely recognizes as being in his father’s employ march into the kitchen, dragging someone with them. 

Someone tall, and blond. 

“THOMAS!” yells John, scrambling over the table to get between the men holding his brother and the door. Brighid screams, and Martha gasps out something that might be ‘Lady Hamilton’ and runs for the other door. 

“THOMAS!” John yells again, and throws himself at the man holding Thomas’ right arm. 

“John, no -” gasps Thomas, and John gets a first look at the bloody lip and swelling eye already present on his brother. 

Which, naturally, is when the third man punches John in the back of the head. 

He hits the floor hard, and tries to get his hands and knees under himself so that he can stand up, only for a booted foot to catch him in the ribs. 

“JOHN!” 

The next three kicks are also aimed at his ribs, and then someone stomps down on his hand, and he cries out in pain. 

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” yells Thomas, slightly fainter, this time. 

John drags his head up enough to see the men carrying Thomas kick open the back door. 

“JOHNNY!” yells Thomas, fighting wildly against the men holding him. 

“THOMAS!” John yells, reaching out for him in a gesture he already knows is futile. 

Someone fists a hand in his hair and slams his face into the floor, and blackness swallows him down. 

***

“You knew him?” James asks. 

“I loved him.” says Silver. He pauses, studies James’ face, laughs quietly. “Not like you, James. I loved him because he was my brother.” 

“I knew all of my husband’s brothers.” says Miranda. “I did not know you.”

“But you never met his father’s ward, did you?” says Silver. 

Miranda’s lips part in understanding. 

“Johnny.” she says. “Thomas called you Johnny. You were at Oxford - he said you’d be a fantastic help to our cause as soon as you graduated.” 

Silver’s smile only tugs up one corner of his lips, and doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“I never did manage that. Graduating. Turns out, once you’ve institutionalized your heir, you realize you can just tell your bastard to go fuck himself and withdraw his funding.”

James can’t get enough air into his lungs. 

“But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Lady Hamilton?” asks John, nonchalant. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about what happened to the rest of us, because you took a good man, a noble man, a man of righteousness, if you were to listen to Martha and Brighid and Matthew and Luke in the stables, and you made him leave. You made him abandon my brother.” 

Miranda shakes her head. 

“And you!” says John, whirling on James, stabbing a finger into his chest. “You let her!” 

“Silver-” says James, and his tongue feels heavy as he says it, to the point where he doesn’t know if he said it at all. “John -”

“You let her convince you to leave him! He told me about that book, you know - told me all about it, what it said, what it meant.” 

James flinches. 

“He loved you, and you abandoned him!” John yells, tears pricking his eyes. 

The crew is watching them like a tennis match, completely silent. 

“John -” says James, with barely breath behind it.

“You abandoned him!” says John, and jabs James in the chest again. “You abandoned him, you left him, you left him-” with each jab, John gets closer and closer to James’ chest. “You left him, you left him, you left him you left him you -” 

James wraps his arms around John’s shoulders, pulls him close, holds him so that John’s face is pressed to his own shoulder.

“We couldn’t have saved him.” says James. “Miranda saved my life by making me leave. The Earl would have had me hung.” 

“For what? Adultery? You heard the story they put about.”

“He knew. So did the Navy.” says James. “He knew the truth.” 

John pulls back from James’ embrace just far enough to look him in the face. 

“How?”

“We always thought it was one of the servants.” says Miranda, quietly. 

“Not a fucking chance.” says John. “They all worshipped the ground he walked on. They were devastated. Who else knew?” 

Miranda looks at James. James looks at Miranda. They both look at John, still wrapped in James’ arms. 

“There is an obvious answer here, and that answer is my father.” 

Everyone on the deck turns to look at Abigail Ashe, whose gaze is steady. 

“That fucker.” says John, and James finds himself growling his agreement. 

***

“James.” says Peter Ashe. “Miranda.” 

“Hello, Peter.” says James. He knows he’s standing more like the naval officer he used to be than the pirate captain he has become, but it’s hard not to, now that he’s got a Hamilton Lord to protect once more. “There’s someone you ought to meet.” 

“Oh?” says Peter, the picture of unimpressed politesse. 

“You remember Alfred Hamilton’s ward, John?” says Miranda, fake smile firmly in place. James steps aside, steps to the asshole guard who’d met them at the dock, the only armed man in the room, and drives the knife he’d stashed in his coat sleeve between his ribs to his heart, and John Silver raises the pistol in his hand. 

“You got my brother killed, you son of a bitch.” John snarls, and Peter raises his hands and backs towards the wall, terrified.

“He’s alive, please, James, Miranda, please, he’s alive. The letters are in my desk, he’s in Savannah - please, I didn’t mean -” 

John stays where he is, aim unwavering, until Abigail returns with the papers. 

“They seem to be in order.” she says. “If Mister Silver’s brother is alive, will you go fetch him, Mister McGraw?”

“We definitely will, Miss Ashe.” says James. 

“We can’t leave my brother there, Abigail.” says John. “The Captain would die of want for his true love.” 

Miranda buries a smile under her hand, and Peter continues to shake with fear. 

“We’d best be off, John.” says James. “The wind we sailed in on could take us to Savannah.”

John raises an eyebrow at Peter, who flinches further back into the corner he’d backed himself into. 

“Don’t play with your food, Johnny.” says James, stepping up so that he’s pressed against John’s back. “Didn’t they teach you manners at Eton and Oxford?” 

“Where’s the fun in that?” John purrs back. 

“Please.” says Peter, and it’s almost a sob.

“Shall we do it together, then?” asks John, before cocking his head. “Miranda, would you like to help?” 

Miranda has drawn the sword from the dead guard’s belt. 

“This seems like a better weapon for all three of us.” she says. 

John and James’ fingers interlock when they grasp the hilt with her.


End file.
